Keywords

1 Introduction

Edward Hitchcock is best known today for his systematic study of fossil footprints from the Connecticut River valley in western Massachusetts in the 1830s and 1840s. Late in his career, in 1863, he published a set of Reminiscences of Amherst College, where he had served both as professor of natural theology and geology and as president of the college. In these reminiscences, he offered the following reflections on his work as a geologist:

I reckon, and who does not reckon, among the purest pleasures of life, the opportunity to gaze upon the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime in natural scenery. Such occasions form delightful oases among life’s barren sands. We never forget them. They have few or no drawbacks, and we enjoy them by retrospection over and over again, and with increasing relish. But though such scenes lie not exclusively within the province of the geologist, he is prepared better than others to enjoy them. His home is among them. (1863, pp. 402–403)

This passage points to a distinctively esthetic way of thinking about geological research. Hitchcock emphasizes the esthetic pleasure of geological fieldwork. And he reaches for esthetic concepts – “the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime” – in order to say something about the source of that esthetic pleasure. It is tempting to speculate that when he mentions “the bizarre,” he might be referring to the fossil footprints that he studied so intensively. Especially important is Hitchcock’s claim that the geologist “is prepared better than others” to enjoy “such scenes.”

What Hitchcock says about his own geological research suggests a new direction for philosophical reflection on the geosciences. Philosophers of science have, until very recently, mostly neglected the esthetic dimension of the geoscientific work. For complex reasons having to do with the contingencies of disciplinary history, philosophers tend to privilege epistemic questions about scientific knowledge, explanation, and empirical success. Recent work in environmental esthetics can help develop Hitchcock’s suggestions more fully. Recognizing that geoscientific research is a form of esthetic engagement could also contribute to a reinvigoration of the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science.

Section 2 fills in some additional background about Edward Hitchcock and his spouse, Orra White Hitchcock, who was (not coincidentally) a pathbreaking scientific artist and illustrator. Section 3 provides an overview of philosophical work on the earth sciences over the last 20 years, highlighting the ways in which philosophers have privileged epistemological questions, to the neglect of the esthetic. Section 4 introduces two helpful approaches to environmental esthetics: Allen Carlson’s scientific cognitivism, and Arnold Berleant’s esthetics of engagement. Each of these approaches can help elucidate different aspects of Hitchcock’s geological esthetics. Finally, Sect. 5 circles back to the geosciences and shows how these approaches to environmental esthetics can help enrich our understanding of geoscientific practice in ways that might be useful for the historiography of the earth sciences.

2 Learning from Hitchcock’s Geological Esthetics

One way to understand Hitchcock’s reference to “the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime in natural scenery” is to think about traditions of landscape painting. Hitchcock’s esthetic sensibilities place him in a tradition that emphasizes the picturesque in nature. According to Allen Carlson:

[T]he idea of the picturesque gave rise to a mode of aesthetic appreciation in which nature is experienced as if divided into a set of scenes – into blocks of scenery. Such scenes aim in subject matter and composition at ideals dictated by the arts, especially landscape painting. (Carlson 2010, p. 291)

One representative of this type of landscape painting is Thomas Cole’s 1836 “View from Mt. Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm” (Fig. 1). This painting captures the scenery of the Connecticut River valley, where Hitchcock was, around that very time, collecting fossil footprints, research that he later compiled in (Hitchcock 1858). Cole is explicitly contrasting the wilder ridgeline of the Holyoke range with the cultivated river valley below. The receding thunderstorm creates a classic impression of the sublime, or of nature’s ferocity and indifference as seen from a safe remove.

Fig. 1
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Thomas Cole’s “View from Mt. Holyoke” (1836). (Image in the public domain)

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When Hitchcock exhorts his readers to go out and do geological fieldwork, he writes about natural scenery in a way that evokes this tradition of landscape painting:

Gladly at such times would I entice you into the wild scenes of Nature. The mountains, the valleys, the gorges, the beetling cliffs, the caverns, the mines, the wild cataracts, the deep solitudes, stand ready to welcome you, to inspire you with fresh vigor, and to feast you with their beauties and sublimities, as much as if none before you had reveled upon them. (Hitchcock 1863, p. 406)

This could almost serve as a caption for Thomas Cole’s painting, which offers us the perspective gained after ascending from the more domesticated valley to the wilder ridge of the Mt. Holyoke Range. But Hitchcock is not urging his readers merely to go out and experience nature. He sees something distinctively valuable in studying the landscape:

[L]et me exhort you to go forth, not with fishing tackle and fowling-piece, (the meagre resort of many), but with minds well stored with scientific principles, a hammer in hand, and an aneroid barometer by your side, and laying your course for the mountains, learn the character of the rocks, their origin and fossil contents. (1863, p. 406)

This introduces a theme that I will develop further, later on: Putting it vaguely for now, we might say that geological research is a way of deepening one’s connection with places, a way of cultivating sense of place (Tuan 1975). Studying nature, “learning the character of the rocks, their origin and fossil contents,” cannot be distinguished sharply from appreciating nature’s “beauties and sublimities.”

Like many nineteenth-century naturalists, Hitchcock’s scientific practice included drawing, and his published work on the fossilized trackways includes hand-drawn diagrams (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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An example of Edward Hitchcock’s drawing of fossilized trackways. (From Hitchcock 1858, Plate XXXV. Image in the public domain)

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Drawing was an important aspect of Hitchcock’s scientific practice, in part because representations such as that in Fig. 2 served as data. But sketch work of this kind also helps to develop perceptual skills. Practice at drawing can help the naturalist get better at seeing fine-grained features of the fossils.

Hitchcock’s wife, Orra White Hitchcock, was herself an accomplished artist and naturalist who was well-known at the time for her botanical illustrations (D’Arienzo 2010). She also produced many drawings of landscapes for Edward Hitchcock’s published works, and large-scale geological diagrams for his lectures at Amherst College – the nineteenth-century version of Powerpoint slides. Figure 3 is an example of one of Orra Hitchcock’s geological diagrams, showing a cross-section of the Connecticut River Valley (See also Oldroyd 2013 on the rise of geological diagrams in the late 1700s to early 1800s).

Fig. 3
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One of Orra White Hitchcock’s geological diagrams. (Image in the public domain)

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In Orra Hitchcock’s work, we can see the idealized representation of geological history. And Orra Hitchcock is here representing exactly the same landscape that Thomas Cole painted. The oxbow in Cole’s painting is just north of Mt. Tom, depicted in Fig. 2. Both focused on the place where the Connecticut River cuts a gorge between the Mt. Holyoke Range, to the east, and Mt. Tom, to the southwest.

For Edward and Orra Hitchcock, geological research was thoroughly woven together with artistic practice and with esthetic appreciation. Edward Hitchcock also saw nature itself as God’s work – literally, as a work of art. He encouraged a “sanctified, Christian love of Nature” (1863, p. 407) and consistently sought to integrate his geological work with his Christian views, especially in his Religion of Geology (1851). Together, the Hitchcocks’ work is an excellent example of what Wragge-Morley (2020) has called “aesthetic science.” Wragge-Morley points out that the tradition of natural theology invites one to think of natural science as a way of engaging with and appreciating God’s creation. That tradition treats nature as a divine artwork.

One other aspect of Hitchcock’s geological esthetics that deserves attention is what we might call the geological imagination, or perhaps “stereotemporal experience” (Turner 2019a). In the passage quoted at the start, Hitchcock says that the geologist is “better prepared than others” to enjoy the beauty, the bizarreness, and the sublimity in nature. But why? One answer is that geological knowledge makes it possible to experience the present landscape while also, at the same time, imaginatively placing oneself in a landscape that existed long ago. Here is one place where Hitchcock tries to articulate this stereotemporal experience:

In this country we speak of an Ante-Columbian history as giving a hoary aspect to our annals, and making them therefore of intense interest. But the geologist can point to beds of gravel and sand near the tops of most of the New England mountains, and to the erosion of their summits by icebergs and glaciers, showing that once the ocean stood for ages above them, and that an arctic climate prevailed; nay, he can show where the Connecticut and the Hudson, by the slow action of their streams, have cut gorges into the rocks a thousand feet deep. (1863, p. 404)

Where Thomas Cole captured a landscape contrasting the wilder ridgeline with the cultivated and domesticated river valley, Hitchcock’s geological imagination takes him to a time when the Mt. Holyoke range was covered by ice. He is imagining the time it took the Connecticut River to cut the gorge between Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom. Orra White Hitchcock’s stratigraphic diagram (Fig. 3 above) also represents the same landscape in a way that informs this stereotemporal experience.

Herbert (2010) argues that Edward Hitchcock was a “romantic naturalist.” According to Herbert, “Hitchcock’s devotion to the aesthetics of landscape distinguishes him from most fellow geologists of his era …” (2010, p. 72). In particular, Herbert thinks that Hitchcock’s geological interpretations of the volcanic ridges and hills around Amherst, Massachusetts, are informed by the romantic notion of the sublime. Wry (2019, p. 99) also argues that Hitchcock was probably very familiar with Edmund Burke’s treatment of the beautiful and the sublime, and that this familiarity shows up in some of Hitchcock’s writings, for example, when he claims that “nature everywhere is fitted up in a lavish manner with all the elements of the sublime and the beautiful” (Hitchcock 1851, p. 157). To Herbert and Wry’s observations, we might add, though, that some of Hitchcock’s writings suggest that the sublime might involve temporal as well as spatial distance from the observer. From a geological perspective, the deep past has a kind of sublimity – it is awe-inspiring, harsh, and even terrifying, though appreciated only from a safe temporal distance. The volcanic ridges around Amherst point to dangerous upheavals in the past, which we can contemplate and appreciate from a distance of millions of years, like a distant mountain range or the receding thunderstorm in Cole’s painting. It is just that nature’s ferocity is receding into the past, rather than into the distance.

Emily Dickinson was a younger contemporary of Edward Hitchcock in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson may well have attended Hitchcock’s lectures at Amherst College, and she likely studied his geology textbook in school at the Amherst Academy (Uno 1998; Wry 2019). From Hitchcock’s writings, she would have learned that the landscape around Amherst was shaped by volcanism. The Mount Holyoke range, just to the south of Amherst, was formed by basalt flows that date to the beginning of the Jurassic, the very moment in time when so many of Hitchcock’s dinosaur tracks were formed. Some of Dickinson’s poetry reflects this geological knowledge:

Volcanoes be in Sicily

And South America

I judge from my Geography

Volcanoes nearer here

A Lava step at any time

Am I inclined to climb

A Crater I may contemplate

Vesuvius at Home

Dickinson could literally have climbed “a Lava step at any time,” near her home, if she hiked up the traprock ridges of the Mt. Holyoke Range, to the very place where Thomas Cole situates the viewer. Her poetry affords a good illustration of how geological knowledge of the deep past can contribute to sense of place. The poem also expresses a sense of the temporal sublime, of a terrifying, cataclysmic event – a volcanic eruption – that the geologist can contemplate from a safe temporal remove, just as we might contemplate geographically distant volcanoes in Sicily or South America.

To summarize, Hitchcock clearly saw geological research as an esthetic activity. His geological esthetics has a number of different themes: (1) the use of esthetic concepts, such as the beautiful, the sublime, and the bizarre; (2) the idea that geological knowledge better positions us to appreciate nature; (3) the romantic interest in the picturesque, and in natural scenery; (4) the interest in embodied engagement with the landscape, i.e., in grabbing your rock hammer and heading into the field; (4) the sense that nature is literally God’s work, and hence a work of art; (5) an interest in stereotemporal experience, as facilitated by geological imagination; (6) temporalizing the esthetic concept of the sublime; and (7) conceiving of geological research as activity that helps cultivate a sense of place in the sense of Tuan (1975), i.e., the “at home” in Dickinson’s “Vesuvius at home.”

It is difficult to understand what Hitchcock thought he was up to, or how he conceived of his own scientific work, or his relationship to those whom he influenced, such as Dickinson, without help from esthetics. This, in turn, points to a serious shortcoming in recent philosophy of science. Although things are beginning to change (see Wylie 2015, 2021; Turner 2019; Currie 2017, 2023), for decades, philosophers of science have privileged epistemic questions about the earth sciences, to the neglect of esthetic considerations.

3 Philosophy of the Geosciences: 2002–2024

Carol Cleland’s (2002) paper, “Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical and Experimental Science” is a good place to commence an overview of recent work in the philosophy of the geosciences. One reason for this is that Cleland has also published her ideas in geoscientific venues (e.g., Cleland 2001, 2013), where her thinking has had some influence. Furthermore, her way of framing the issues has set the tone for much of the subsequent discussion. Some aspects of her view – such as her reliance on the “asymmetry of overdetermination” – have not caught on. However, Cleland’s critics have tended to adopt some of her opening distinctions and questions (see Turner 2005, 2007, 2009; Kleinhans et al. 2005; Forber and Griffith 2011; Tucker 2004, 2011; Currie 2018).

Cleland (2002, 2011, 2013) distinguishes “prototypical historical science” from “classical experimental science,” treating these two as ideal types. What makes historical science distinctive, she proposed, is its methodology. Experimental researchers test hypotheses about regularities among event-types by trying to rule out false positives and false negatives. Historical scientists, by contrast, are more focused on testing hypothesis about token events in the past. They do this by generating multiple hypotheses that would, if true, explain the presently observable traces. Then they search for the proverbial “smoking gun,” a trace or set of traces that discriminates between rival historical hypotheses. Tellingly, Cleland used a geoscientific example – the confirmation of the Alvarez impact hypothesis – to illustrate how historical science works. In her account, for example, the Chicxulub crater is a smoking gun that confirms the impact hypothesis. Cleland also deployed a highly original argument to help establish the epistemic credentials of historical natural science. She drew upon David Lewis’ (1979) idea that causal overdetermination is temporally asymmetrical: Downstream effects typically overdetermine their upstream causes, but the opposite is rarely true. Aside from some unusual examples (such as firing squads), upstream causes do not usually overdetermine downstream effects. Cleland argued that historical and experimental scientists both exploit this asymmetry of overdetermination, though from different directions. The overdetermination of upstream causes by their downstream effects means that usually, there will be some set of downstream traces that can serve as a smoking gun, even if we have not found it yet.

Cleland’s account of the distinctive methodology of historical science as involving the search for a “smoking gun” differs somewhat from Frodeman’s (1995) earlier suggestion that geology is fundamentally an interpretive or hermeneutic science (See also Frodeman 2003). Both Frodeman and Cleland agree that geology does have a distinctive methodology, and both are interested in the epistemological upshots of their observations about method (see Raab and Frodeman 2002).

Other philosophers subsequently pushed back against various pieces of Cleland’s view. For example, Adrian Currie (2015, 2018) argues that we should resist the idea that historical science has a distinctive methodology. He argues, contra Cleland, that historical investigators are often successful precisely because they are “methodological omnivores,” who take advantage of a wide variety of modeling techniques and inferential tools. In some of my own earlier work (e.g., Turner 2005, 2007), I argued that Cleland’s epistemic optimism did not actually follow from the asymmetry of overdetermination, and that there might be good reasons for a more pessimistic outlook. And there are important kinds of historical scientific research that do not fit Cleland’s account of the search for the smoking gun (Turner 2009). Meanwhile, Forber and Griffith (2011) reexamined Cleland’s case study and argued that in that case, what really matters is consilience among distinct, independent lines of evidence. Currie, for his part, never accepted Cleland’s idea that historical science has a distinctive methodology. Neither does he accept her argument from the asymmetry of overdetermination. But he has developed a different line of argument for an optimistic view of the epistemology of historical science. Indeed, much of the discussion of historical science over the last 20 years has focused on this question about the prospects for overcoming epistemic underdetermination with respect to hypotheses about the deep past.

At the center of Cleland’s work, and much of the work of other philosophers who have responded to her, is an interest in traditional epistemological questions about confirmation, inference, and underdetermination. Underdetermination was also a central theme in discussions of scientific realism. The deep past is unobservable, and so historical science raises questions about access to the unobservable past, and about the status of what geoscientists tell us about the deep past (Turner 2007, 2018). This has led some philosophers to explore questions about realism in connection with the geosciences. For example, Rossetter (2018) uses James Hutton’s work as a test case for thinking about novel predictive success. For another example, Miyake’s (2017) work on seismology puts some pressure on the traditional classification of geology as historical science and so pushes back against one aspect of Cleland’s framing. Nevertheless, Miyake is also interested in questions about access to the unobservable parts of our own planet. Scientific realists have always been interested in the project of explaining the empirical success of science. Even Currie (2018), who is generally skeptical about the value of the realism debate, frames his project as an effort to explain how historical scientists are able to achieve some epistemic successes even in unlucky circumstances.

Cleland’s distinction between “prototypical historical science” and “classical experimental science” harkens back to the older distinction that Wilhelm Windelband (1980/1894) drew between idiographic science and nomothetic science. Idiographic science is all about reconstructing historical particulars, whereas nomothetic science aims to discover general patterns, regularities, and/or laws. Cleland’s distinction between hypotheses about token events and hypotheses about regularities among event types closely tracks the idiographic/nomothetic distinction. Many philosophers have also taken this distinction to point to different modes or styles of explanation. Some explanations, such as classic Hempelian deductive-nomological (D-N) ones, invoke laws, or perhaps causal generalizations. Hempel, notoriously, saw historical explanations as derivative, incomplete sketches of iterated D-N explanations. In response to Hempel (1942, 1965), other philosophers (e.g., Gallie 1955) argued that narrative or historical explanation – or what they sometimes called “genetic explanation” – stands on its own as a legitimate mode of explanation that is not reducible to covering-law explanations. More recently, philosophers of science have shown a great interest in questions about narrative explanation (See Hull 1975; Beatty 2016, 2017; Currie 2014; Currie and Sterelny 2017; Roth 2019; Ereshefsky and Turner 2020; Velleman 2003). This discussion is closely related to questions about historical contingency, with some philosophers, especially John Beatty, arguing that narrative is especially good at expressing relationships of historical contingency. This discussion of explanation also has an epistemic dimension, since one of the main things at issue is whether narrative explanation is (epistemically) as good as other forms of scientific explanation. Ever since Gould and Lewontin’s (1979) critique of “just so stories” in evolutionary biology, many philosophers have worried that narrative explanations are too easy to generate and too difficult to subject to empirical test. For that reason, one goal of much of this philosophical work has been to help establish the epistemic credentials of narrative explanation.

Currie (2018) has also revived discussion about the importance of speculation in historical science, where speculative claims are generally thought of as claims that outrun the current empirical evidence. The role of speculation has long been of interest to geoscientists (Davis 1926). And Currie’s defense of speculation is also epistemic. He argues that speculation often has indirect investigative payoff. The main worries about speculation are also epistemic (Turner 2019b).

Finally, other theorists have focused on issues in the geosciences that Cleland’s account of the search for the smoking gun does not capture very well. For example, Bokulich (2020) and Dresow (2021) explore questions about geochronology. Tamborini (2020) focuses on the implications of technological change for the epistemology of the deep past. And some philosophers have sought to shift the emphasis from the confirmation (or disconfirmation) of hypotheses and theories – the central issue in Cleland’s account – to a different set of questions about modeling practices in the geosciences (Bokulich and Oreskes 2017; Currie 2018; Bokulich 2021; cf. Oreskes et al. 1994). Again, however, this recent work tends to emphasize epistemological questions.

This section offers something of an aerial survey of recent work in philosophy of science that bears on the geosciences. This survey surely leaves out a great deal, but the goal is just to identify some of the main contours of the discussion among philosophers. These include:

  1. 1.

    An interest in the distinction between historical and experimental science, with the geosciences seen as falling mostly under the “historical” heading.

  2. 2.

    An interest in the relative epistemic status of historical science, including the geosciences.

  3. 3.

    An interest in historical modes of scientific explanation.

  4. 4.

    An interest in how scientists succeed in “overcoming underdetermination” and “gaining access” to the unobservable deep past.

The larger theme here is a privileging or foregrounding epistemic question. If we go along with this privileging of epistemic questions and concerns, that leaves us in the awkward situation of having to downplay much of what Edward Hitchcock says about his own geological research. His reflections on the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime in nature turn out to be merely ancillary. According to the prevailing picture that we get from recent philosophy of science, what is really going on is that Hitchcock is collecting data in the form of historical traces, such as fossilized footprints. Then he is doing his best to synthesize different lines of evidence and to “overcome underdetermination” – that is, to draw some solid inferences about the deep past of the Connecticut River Valley. This is all fine as far as it goes, but it also ignores a great deal of what Hitchcock himself is telling us about his work. If we are going to take seriously what he says about his geologizing, we might do better to turn to environmental esthetics.

4 Help from the Direction of Environmental Esthetics

The work of two philosophers, in particular, can help us to better understand Edward Hitchcock’s esthetic reflections on his geological research. This section focuses on Arnold Berleant’s esthetics of engagement, as well as Allen Carlson’s scientific cognitivism. Berleant and Carlson are sometimes seen as developing rival views in environmental esthetics. However, while differing in emphasis, one can understand both views as highlighting different aspects of our esthetic engagement with landscapes and places. There is some danger of anachronism here, as Hitchcock’s own esthetic sensibility was probably a bit different – a bit of romanticism, an interest in the picturesque, and an admixture of Christian commitment. Nevertheless, here and there in Hitchcock’s writing, we can find hints that point toward more contemporary views in esthetics. Following up on these hints can give us new ways of looking at the history of the geosciences.

To start with, it might help to begin by thinking about the notion of the picturesque. According to that model, esthetic experience involves some distance between the perceiver and, let us say, the landscape or scenery that one is “taking in.” Perhaps one familiar sort of experience is stopping at a pullout or scenic viewpoint at a national park and appreciating some rock formation from a distance. According to this model, we experience a natural scene almost as if it were a landscape painting, or perhaps a postcard. The viewer, in this model, remains largely passive – basically a spectator who is viewing nature from a distance rather than interacting with it. When Hitchcock relishes “the opportunity to gaze upon the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime in natural scenery,” he is clearly working within this model of the picturesque. Another feature of this way of understanding the esthetic experience of nature is that it is unimodal. It emphasizes visual experience, to the neglect of other sensory modalities. One way to think about both Berleant and Carlson’s work is that they are both seeking to move beyond the limitations of this “natural scenery” model. Berleant argues that this model of the picturesque leaves out much of what is important about our perceptual experience of nature. Carlson, for his part, argues that it leaves out the cognitive dimension of esthetic experience.

Berleant (1992, 2010) wants to resist the suggestion that nature or natural landscapes are something “out there” to be appreciated from a distance, as we might view a landscape painting in a museum. Instead, the experiencer is in nature, immersed in it, constantly engaging with their surroundings. Berleant remains consistent with the model of the picturesque in his emphasis that esthetic engagement is fundamentally perceptual, but he departs from that model in other important ways. According to him, esthetic engagement is multimodal, embodied, and interactive. It requires all of one’s senses, and it involves a give and take with the landscape. Rather than taking in a view from a distance, the experiencer is moving around, taking in sights and sounds from different angles. The visual experience of a scene in the desert cannot be separated from the feeling of the sandy trail under one’s feet, or the sun on one’s face. Berleant writes:

The concept of aesthetic engagement signifies human embeddedness and active participation in the experience of appreciation. Rather than adopting a sense of distance in contemplating a landscape or an art object, engaged appreciation encourages a close involvement characterised by experiential reciprocity. (2010, p. 344)

That reciprocity is central to what Berleant means by “engagement.” Think about something as simple as a hike along a trail. The walker actively traverses the landscape, but the topography and features of the place, including the contours of the trail, also influence the walker. There is a sense in which the land dictates, for example, that an uphill trail will be more strenuous. Berleant writes that “just as people impose themselves on things, so, too, to things exercise an influence on people” (2010, p. 341). The walk itself can almost be seen as an esthetic collaboration between the walker and the landscape. Thus, Berleant’s emphasis on esthetic engagement shifts the focus from the esthetic qualities of the landscape as an object of appreciation, to the interactive experiential process.

When Edward Hitchcock exhorted his reader to “go forth … a hammer in hand, and an aneroid barometer by your side …” we can read that as an injunction to go out and engage esthetically with nature, in Berleant’s sense of “engage.” Traditional philosophy of science, as we saw in Sect. 2, tends to see geological fieldwork as mere data collection, where the rationale for doing fieldwork is narrowly epistemic. The goal is to assemble traces, to document historical evidence. Berleant’s work, however, invites us to see scientific fieldwork as a form of esthetic engagement with places, where that esthetic engagement might turn out to be intrinsically rewarding, independently of its epistemic payoff.

Whereas Berleant, as we have seen, challenges the model of the picturesque by immersing the experiencer in nature, Carlson (2000, 1977, 1981) challenges that same model from a different direction. Carlson argues that esthetic appreciation of artwork is always mediated by background knowledge. What is more, knowing something about historical context better positions us to appreciate a work of art. Consider, by way of example, Thomas Cole’s painting of the view from Mt. Holyoke (Fig. 1 above). Of course, someone who knows nothing at all about the painting – who painted it, or where, or when – can still enjoy it. However, learning a bit more about the context can deepen our appreciation of what we are seeing. For example, suppose you learn that Cole, like Emily Dickinson, was interested in volcanoes. A few years later, he painted Mt. Etna, in Sicily – the volcano that Dickinson also references obliquely in her poem. This makes us wonder if both painter and poet were interested in comparing older, American volcanoes – the traprock ridge of the Holyoke range – with younger, European ones? Or suppose you learn that Thomas Cole painted his view from Mt. Holyoke around the same time he was working on his famous series, The Course of Empire. Did he see the cultivated Connecticut Valley as one moment in the longer cycle depicted in that series of paintings? The point is that learning a bit about the historical and artistic context affects how we experience the artwork. According to Carlson (2010), one weakness of the model of the picturesque is that it leaves out this cognitive aspect of esthetic experience.

The guiding idea of Carlson’s scientific cognitivism in esthetics is that what goes for art also goes for nature: Our experience of plants, animals, and landscapes is also affected by what we know.

If to aesthetically appreciate art we must have knowledge of artistic traditions and styles within those traditions, to aesthetically appreciate nature we must have knowledge of the different environments of nature and of the systems and elements within those environments. In the way in which the art critic and the art historian are well equipped to aesthetically appreciate art, the naturalist and the ecologist are well equipped to aesthetically appreciate nature. (Carlson 1977, p. 273)

To the naturalist and the ecologist, we might add the geoscientist. Indeed, we can read Carlson as providing the theoretical underpinnings for Hitchcock’s remark that the geologist is “better prepared than others” to enjoy nature’s scenes. Carlson’s point about the importance of background knowledge is well illustrated by Hitchcock’s fossilized three-toed trackways. One can marvel at and appreciate the trackways without knowing anything about them. But even just knowing something about their age cannot help but affect our esthetic appreciation of them. Suppose we learn that the trackways were made around the same time as the volcanic activity that created the Mt. Holyoke range (Raymo and Raymo 2001). Even this modicum of historical knowledge – i.e., that they belong to the deep past, and that they are related to other landscape features from the same era – will make a difference to how we appreciate them. One way to see this is by invoking Korsmeyer’s (2016) argument that the value of “real old things” has to do with how they place us into causal contact with earlier things and events. The idea that esthetic judgments are sensitive to knowledge of causal history is also a running theme of work in environmental philosophy (Krieger 1973; Elliot 1982; Katz 1992).

Carlson’s scientific cognitivism has some fascinating consequences for how we think about the relationship between esthetic and epistemic values in science (Turner 2019a). For example, philosophers of science have tended to think of goals such as knowledge and understanding as anchoring values that organize and structure scientific activity. Carlson’s view turns things upside down by suggesting that scientific knowledge might be instrumental to richer or deeper esthetic appreciation of nature.

Neither Berleant nor Carlson ever set out with the express aim to shed light on scientific practice. They and others working in environmental esthetics are often more focused on whether esthetic values can undergird arguments for environmental protection or conservation (for an overview, see Hettinger 2008). And while some of Berleant and Carlson’s respective insights are compatible, this brief survey has downplayed their disagreements. For example, Carlson sees his scientific cognitivism as a way of vouchsafing some objectivity when it comes to esthetic judgments. Berleant, on the other hand, sees his esthetics of engagement as challenging pretensions to objectivity. Their work does, however, suggest ways of further developing and refining some of the esthetic hints in Edward Hitchcock’s reflections on his own scientific practice. For present purposes, I mainly want to make the fairly modest point that recent work in environmental esthetics is relevant to understanding the esthetic dimensions of the practice of the geosciences. More work is surely needed to further develop these suggestions in ways that counterbalance the privileging of the epistemic that I discussed in Sect. 3. There remains plenty of room for disagreement about details. For example, Turner (2019a) and Currie (2023) have different views about the relationship between the epistemic and the esthetic dimensions of scientific practice. Turner (2019a), building on Carlson’s scientific cognitivism, argues that the relationship is conceptual, whereas Currie (2023) argues that the relationship is a merely contingent one, and that scientific training attunes people’s esthetic capacities to the traditional epistemic goals of science. Both agree, however, that more work is needed to do justice to the esthetic dimensions of science, and particularly of the geohistorical sciences.

Some researchers whose work focuses on the role of field experience in earth science teaching are already in touch with the esthetic dimensions of geoscientific practice. For example, Mogk and Goodwin (2012) argue that “immersion in nature” – an idea that echoes Berleant on the esthetics of engagement – is an important aspect of field experience for students of the earth sciences. They also stress the “affective aspects of field instruction.” Approaches to place-based geoscience education explicitly link scientific training to cultivation of sense of place (Semken et al. 2017). That geological practice has an esthetic dimension is nothing new to scientists. Philosophical work in environmental esthetics can help us to better understand that esthetic dimension.

5 Historiography with Esthetics in Mind

To summarize the argument up to this point: Section 2 explored the esthetic dimensions of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock’s geological work. Section 3 surveyed recent work in the philosophy of historical science, with its privileging of the epistemic. Section 4 introduced some ideas from environmental esthetics. The suggestion is that environmental esthetics can help serve as a corrective to the oversights of recent philosophy of science. The challenge is to bring the esthetic and epistemic considerations into contact, and to clarify how they are related. This project also has some interesting ramifications for historiography.

To help set the stage, Currie and Walsh (2018) observe that historical narratives typically involve decisions about which details to foreground, and which to background. For example, there are many ways of telling the story of Edward Hitchcock. One could focus on his contributions to dinosaur science; on his interest in science and religion; on his institutional relationship to Amherst College; on his relationship to European contemporaries; or on any number of other historical strands. One possible way in which philosophy of science can contribute to historiography is to suggest priorities for foregrounding. Of course, given the prevailing interest in epistemological issues, philosophers tend to bring certain sorts of questions to the conversation. The argument developed here suggests that philosophers could contribute more to historiography by broadening their interests to include esthetic considerations as well as the relationship between the esthetic and the epistemic dimensions of scientific practice. One way to bring this into sharper focus is to consider another moment from the history of North American geology.

Figure 4 is a field sketch that the nineteenth-century American geologist, G.K. Gilbert, included in his 1877 work, Geology of the Henry Mountains. Gilbert had signed on with John Wesley Powell’s survey of the Rocky Mountain region in 1874. His published report on the Henry Mountains, in Utah, includes some wonderful examples of field sketches. Figure 4 depicts a geological unconformity. The younger horizontal strata above are rocks from the Paleogene, while the inclined strata below are from the Cretaceous. Thus, Gilbert is offering us a look at the K-Pg boundary.

Fig. 4
figure 4

G.K. Gilbert’s sketch of an unconformity near Salina, Utah (Gilbert 1877, p. 15). Image in the public domain

Full size image

To begin with, consider the many things involved in the production of field sketches like this one:

  1. 1.

    The sketchwork is an embodied artistic practice, done with certain tools (pencils, paper, etc.)

  2. 2.

    The sketchwork is a form of embodied interaction with the landscape. Importantly, Gilbert had to position himself in the landscape in a way that gave him a useful perspective on the outcrop. The sketch thus involves esthetic engagement, in Berleant’s sense.

  3. 3.

    The artistic practice contributes to the development of perceptual skills. The practice of drawing can make one a better perceiver of contrasts and relationships, and a better judge of what one is seeing in the landscape.

  4. 4.

    The sketchwork involves abstraction. Gilbert is leaving out lots of detail, while foregrounding details that he judges to be geologically important. In this respect, the field sketch is somewhat like a map. Maps always leave out some details in order to foreground others. For example, a subway map typically does not contain information about surface roads.

  5. 5.

    The sketchwork is mediated by background theory. Gilbert’s decisions about how to represent the landscape reflect certain background geological assumptions and theoretical interests. For example, he relies on the familiar principle of superposition (i.e., the principle that younger rock layers sit on top of older ones), and his artwork reflects the long-standing interest in unconformities as challenges to geological theory. Thus, the sketchwork is cognitively loaded, in Carlson’s sense.

  6. 6.

    The sketchwork evinces a receptivity to the landscape. There is a sense in which the landscape itself is doing something to the artist. Without wanting to overstate this, there is nevertheless a sense in which the landscape “has a say” in how it gets represented. For example, Gilbert’s sketch requires open sight lines and accessible outcrops, and other sorts of landscapes (e.g., heavily forested ones, or flat prairie) might not be so amenable.

  7. 7.

    Gilbert’s sketch is a good example of what Alisa Bokulich (2018) calls a data model. It is not raw data but is rather a model or representation of the data, and one that involves some interpretation, correction for biases, and noise reduction. For example, where the boundary between strata might be difficult to discern in practice when the sun is at the wrong angle, the geologist can correct that by drawing the boundary sharply.

  8. 8.

    Gilbert’s field sketch is an example of a hybrid scientific object. On the one hand, it is an esthetic object, since it is quite literally an artwork. But it is just as much an evidential object, since it may serve as data for the construction of a narrative history of the Henry Mountains.

  9. 9.

    The sketchwork involves esthetic judgment. Although the main purpose of the field sketch is not to capture the scenic beauty of a landscape, esthetic judgment (in the narrow, traditional sense) may still come into play. For example, the artist might decide that the outcrop “looks better” from a particular angle. Or the artist might judge that a particular unconformity is especially dramatic. Indeed, its strikingness may contribute to the sense that it poses an explanatory challenge.

  10. 10.

    Given certain background assumptions about stratigraphy, the artwork also provides structure for a geological narrative of the history of the site.

  11. 11.

    The artwork also activates the imagination, and in particular it involves imaginative picturing of the geological history of the site.

The practice of sketching an important geological site is thus a highly complex one, with both epistemic and esthetic dimensions. The epistemic and esthetic aspects of the practice blur together both in the process of sketching the landscape, and in the product itself, which is both an artwork and an evidential object.

From this all too brief discussion, we can draw a couple of conclusions. When we look at a historical moment such as Gilbert’s report on the geology of the Henry Mountains, there are good reasons to be careful about privileging epistemic questions. In Gilbert’s practice – i.e., going out into the landscape and producing representations of important features – epistemic and esthetic considerations weave together. Just as Wylie (2015) emphasizes that prepared fossil specimens are both data and, in a sense, artworks created by preparators, Gilbert’s field sketch is at one and the same time a geological data model and a bit of landscape art. Trying to isolate the epistemic dimension of this work from the esthetic and artistic will lead to a distorted understanding of the practice. Moreover, Berleant and Carlson’s work in environmental esthetics can help to clarify the esthetic dimensions of Gilbert’s practice. On the one hand, his field sketch is the result of immersive esthetic engagement in a particular place, in Berleant’s sense. It is also theoretically mediated in ways suggested by Carlson’s scientific cognitivism.

6 Conclusion

One way to think about some of the philosophical work summarized in Sect. 3 is that it was pushing back against ideas about science that were too narrow. Philosophers of science had inherited a picture of science from the logical empiricists that never fit the theory or practice of the geosciences too well. In various ways, Cleland and other philosophers argued that questions about methodology, explanation, confirmation, underdetermination, etc. look different when we shift our focus to scientific efforts to reconstruct the deep past. In spite of disagreements about details, philosophers working on historical science often shared a sense that traditional questions about the epistemology of science had been too narrowly framed. This contribution has argued that much of the work of these philosophers over the last 20 years has also been too narrowly framed. Edward Hitchcock’s reflections on “the beautiful, the bizarre, and the sublime” in nature point the way to a rethinking of geoscientific practice as suffused with both esthetic and epistemic values. In addition to showing how recent work in environmental esthetics – work that has mostly remained siloed from philosophy of science, in spite of its obvious relevance – can contribute to broadening our understanding of geoscientific practice, this expansion of philosophers’ field of vision could also generate more productive exchange between philosophers and historians of science.